If you are looking for a particular type of element that is further away than the immediate parent, you can use a function that goes up the DOM until it finds one, or doesn't:

// Find first ancestor of el with tagName
// or undefined if not found
function upTo(el, tagName) {
tagName = tagName.toLowerCase();
while (el && el.parentNode) {
el = el.parentNode;
if (el.tagName && el.tagName.toLowerCase() == tagName) {
return el;
}
}
// Many DOM methods return null if they don't
// find the element they are searching for
// It would be OK to omit the following and just
// return undefined
return null;
}